How will you address classroom management in the final weeks of school before a holiday or end of year?

Last year, our district went on winter break one week before Christmas, this year we get off the 22nd. As many teachers probably know, students start getting excited, hipped up, before a major holiday party or long break. It is hard to teach and cover new complicated concepts when they are just waiting for the bell to ring. Usually, I just keep same rules, expectations, and consequences. The only thing I may adjust the very last day is the activities. Many teachers choose to do literacy centers, math centers, or a classroom party with a craft, or to play a G movie, or to host a pajama day with an audio-book, or bring your stuffed animal to school. All those activities are privileges and you can organize them or set them up as rewards if they accomplish a goal in the classroom. For instance, students could have the goal of mastering math facts, or behave during the last week of school, or if they reach their reading goal.  

You can communicate these activities to parents through a newsletter, flyers, etc. Always ask parents if they allow their child to watch a certain movie. Parents, usually like to volunteer or donate classroom funds to make these activities very enjoyable for their children, and they will buy snacks, or donate materials for special crafts.

In what situations would you consult with the school psychologist?

Most students always respond effectively to positive reinforcement and are always engaged, working in the classroom, being productive, and staying on task. They are almost like little ants working along with you to accomplish the objectives of the day. My concerns usually raise with those students that are under performing and positive reinforcement is not  motivation for them. I would consult with a school psychologist when I have tried several strategies, interventions, and nothing works with that particular student. If a student has been sent several times to the principal's office, if meeting with parents doesn't seem to change anything, that is when I would consult with a specialist.
Many times parents will see the need to have their child tested because they see that they fail to maintain healthy relationships with other peers and the teacher, and they fail to succeed academically because their emotional/behavior challenges become a barrier to become successful academically in the school and concentrate in class.
On the other hand, if you see other red flags that sometimes come up, if a student is usually late, misses a lot of school, doesn't do homework, doesn't bring lunch, doesn't clean up nicely, those are signs that something is going on at the home, and as a teacher we should tell our supervisors if we think there might be signs of neglect or child abuse and immediately notify CPS.

Active Engagement Strategies

Engagement is very important because that is the only way students learn. Students attention spam is very short compared to adults. Therefore, we have to switch activities every 10,15,20 minutes depending on the student's age. Some of the student engagement activities I've used are songs in Spanish to learn concepts introduced in the classroom. Thinking maps are used all the time. Mix and match between students with music. Hand and body movements to remember concepts or new vocabulary.   Line up according to the index card and category of the word you have. Centers with puzzles, bingo, dice, dominoes. I've used think, pair, and share. Kagan structures are some of the best activities to implement in the classroom. Make sure student's follow the instructions and directions first. Stick to 5-6 structures and use them often enough so students already know what to do.
Here are some of the structures that are available out there. My instruction time with two groups of students that switch every half-day makes it hard to do sometimes, but it is worth doing between switches, and transitions, or to apply concepts learned in class.

STEM concepts incorporated in Lesson Plans

STEM lessons are not very hard to implement. My science curriculum the Foss kits already come in the format for STEM lessons. The idea is that students instead of being taught the scientific method as a lesson, they use it in the everyday Science class. The foss kits come with open ended focus questions that students need to figure out by themselves. First, they are introduced materials, then they test the materials, they analyze their properties, based on the focus questions the students carry out investigations to solve those focus questions. Teacher assists and reviews vocabulary, provides the sentence frames for students to come up with their own hypothesis and conclusions.

STEM lessons work in strengthening the following skills: Critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, and team work skills. Because those are the skills more sought after by employers.The reason for that is that we are training our students to fill job positions that don't even exist now. For example 20 years ago there weren't jobs for cloud computing, or self-driving cars, and for solar energy cars, and panels.  

Our lessons can incorporate STEM concepts by solving real world problems, encouraging students to carry out investigations, by using technology, research, and working in groups. Cooperative learning helps students come with people skills to the workforce, so that they can efficiently, and productively work with others.

How do you ensure you are thoroughly addressing the grade level standards?

My district has built a foundation that we can use to plan our lessons that addresses all the grade level standards. They give us the curriculum we have to use in order to address all the standards during the school year. We have a curriculum map that tells us exactly what chapter to teach. This is important because our report cards for every trimester grade students per standards, and skills. Some standards are used through the school year like place value, or adding and subtracting with two digits, but it is graded when it is introduced.  Benchmarks follow that pacing as well, therefore is important we are aligned with the standards that the district will be testing on. It is very straightforward, and easy to follow.

When we plan with my team, we use the district maps, the curriculum, and we grade accordingly. We need at least 3 summative grades per standard for the report cards, and parent teacher conferences.

For science we use Foss kits that address all the standards for science, and we teach separately the topics that are not included.

For E.L.A they had the pacing guides, and the curriculum that guided us for reading and writing informational text, supporting ideas from the text, and inferences. They also provide textbooks that cover not only the E.L.A standards, but the social studies standards, and the science standards as well.

For Math we use My Math and Engage New York for teaching all the CCS, and we follow the district pacing guides for chapters and units.

Poverty in the Classroom

For teachers all students are the same, and we have the same expectations for all of them. The only way we can find out of a student’s economic situation is by students comments like: I didn’t have breakfast today, or I am hungry, do you have something to eat Mrs. Stevenson? As teachers we do notice when students wear the same worn out jacket, or shoes. A couple of times I noticed a couple of my students were wearing torn shorts or shirts. We can guess what could be happening at the home, but our best indicator is student’s performance at school. Hidden rules like the language they use in school and how they express themselves, what vocabulary they have, most of it comes from home.  My school is good at providing free breakfast for those students struggling, they also give them money for the winter shop, they can get free clothes at the nurse’s office for emergencies, every once in a while they will get a treat in class for birthdays, and positive reinforcement.

 I had a student call me mom once, I teach fourth grade! I feel is a privilege to see these children more than their own parents. I don’t have my own children, but when I have them, I already have an idea of how I will raise them. In reality money is just a factor in my opinion. Money doesn’t mean anything, what matters most is quality time with your child. That has more impact on children’s academics. The more time you spend with your children, and talk to them, the better they will do in school. I can tell when students have an involved parent, or a stay home mom. It is just wonderful to see the impact of an adult at home to supervise homework, behavior, manners, and to implement values.

As teachers, we try to provide the hidden rules, and the values they may not be getting at home. Nevertheless, love, security, and stability is something a parent has to provide for a child, so the child can concentrate in school and academics.

Growing up we didn’t have a lot of money but we had all of our needs covered,  a very stable home,  my mom was a stay home mom,  our house was paid off, we never moved, we always went to the same school, we had the same friends and neighbors, and church friends. That stability was great for me and my brother to concentrate in academics. My brother and I got scholarships for our private school, and we both got scholarships for college. 

Assessment

I use the two types of assessments formative, and summative. Formative assessment is sequential practice work students do after every lesson. It helps me determine student’s comprehension of the new subject, if they are learning and following the sequence. Students’ capabilities are also reflected here, it has taught me to understand how my students learn. Also it has helped me differentiate the different types of learners in my classroom. This kind of assessment includes homework, fluency work, exit tickets, class participation, cooperative learning, etc. It is by using this tool that start noticing if I need to reteach, if I need to cover vocabulary again, or if I have to teach it again in a different way.

Summative assessment is my evaluation tool to decide if there needs to be intervention for some students after the end of a big unit. It is the accumulative work of several lessons with a common topic. It also helps me identify if a student needs to be tested.

After a test, I review all the problems with the students again and we conclude what was the mistake. That helps them recognize what details they need to be paying more attention to. 

All the data gathered in tests and formative work, are good indicators of a student's learning type, reading level, development, growth, improvement, and ultimately deep learning.

Professionalism in the Workplace

Professionalism in the Workplace

Work ethics is a very important part of a job. When someone counts on you to do a job, and you accept, you must be reliable, because someone is counting on you to play a part. In my work environment, I have seen everybody show great example, and professionalism. Teachers care about the students, and everybody does the best they can. As teachers, it may seem we don’t do very much, but there have been weeks, where I and my grade level team, we barely get time to eat. Parent/ Teacher conferences, usually comes with report cards, or IPV meetings, and it could be very stressful. Nevertheless, we still teach lessons, prepare classes, and do all of our duties.

Recently, I heard a substitute teacher who had accepted a long term substitute job for a maternity leave, decided not to do it last minute. The poor mother had to come to work with 3cm dilated, to prepare for a different substitute that only speaks English. As a teacher, I know how important is to have someone reliable to take care of our class when we are gone. If they don’t follow the lesson plans, or you hear something went wrong; it makes you feel a little bit disappointed.

Sometimes after a long week, teachers will plan to have happy hour somewhere. I don’t drink, therefore, I never go, but I feel that if you do that kind of thing with coworkers you could get in trouble for saying something out of the school environment.

Personally, I never share my Facebook with coworkers or students. That social media tool is exclusively for family and friends, not for the workplace.

I’ve heard some inappropriate comments and opinions, people are not perfect, but we can do the best in our possibilities to make appropriate observations, and to avoid criticizing other people, especially when that is not our job. Just some observations, and work etiquette to avoid getting in trouble.

Bullying

What is bullying?

Growing up, I had a very wholesome childhood with my family. My parents provided a very stable home for me and my brother. I was a very good student, and sometimes I will be teased, and bullied because I always wanted to do what the teachers asked.  When my classmates bullied me, I used to ignore them, and quite honestly I never cared what they thought about me, I knew how to choose my friendships and my best friends were at church. On the other hand, I was popular, school queen, and valedictorian, so their words didn’t really affect my high self-esteem lol. The peers that used to instigate me were bad students, who had problems with teachers, wanted to copy my assignments, and had troubles at home.  This experience taught me valuable lessons very young, and I am glad it never affected me, and that I knew how to handle it. My experience was nothing compared to by brother’s experience he was bullied even by upper grade level students. On one occasion, I was playing volleyball and I heard one person call my brother “non-living”. To my surprise, it was one of my classmates, therefore I decided to stop the game and chased him down, I told him to never again call my brother names. I didn’t think much of that event  at that time, until years later my brother confessed he had been bullied a lot, and that he was depressed, and that at some point he believed what the other kids were telling him, he even cried telling the story as an adult. I was in shock! I had never seen my brother cry, I couldn’t believe how affected he was by it. My brother said that something that helped him overcome those hard times was going to the gym with me, because he got buff and muscular, and the bullying stopped soon after.

As a teacher, I am concerned of how bad bullying is becoming in public schools. Specially, with the shift of middle class families in society. For that reason I don’t have an online forum for students, because I don’t want them to use technology for that.  In the news, there are a lot of cases of cyber-bullying. That is a behavior that has to stop. Parents don’t understand what bullying is because they only hear their child’s version. As a teacher sometimes you can see how it goes back and forth, and many things children say are either from TV, media, or what they see at home. They are calling each other names, bringing each other down, instead of lifting each other up, and getting out the best of each other.

Three goals I want to implement in my classroom this semester

The first semester was definitively a valuable learning experience in all aspects. The whole picture has become clearer, and I feel I know what is expected. The job responsibilities are clearer and I know what they are. My goals for the first semester were to implement a classroom management system, I feel I've found the strategies that fit my teaching style. My second goal was to get know my student's strengths and weaknesses, and help them through the process of learning. My third goal was to balance my work life, student life, and personal life with the teacher in residence program. At the conclusion of the first semester, I realized that I was able to achieve all of those goals.
For this second semester my goals for the classroom are: First, to sharpen my student's writing skills, by providing better analytical, and planning skills, and empowering them for the next school year. Second, to expand my students problem solving skills, with support of great math curriculum and activities. Third, to plan engaging lesson plans according to curriculum, and have them as a template for the next school year.